How to Get More Likes, Shares on Facebook [INFOGRAPHIC]

As a business owner, you already know it is a cut-throat world out there. You need every trick in the book to outshine your competitors and keep your customers coming back. Whether you are painting your offices purple or giving away freebies, your business has to be better then the next or it will sink – with you in it.

So why would you give your competitors the edge by shying away from the lucrative industry that is the internet community? Do you even have a social media strategy, or are you just floating around in the sea of technology, hoping your clients get your message in a bottle? Social media marketingisn’t a luxury; it is an absolute must. Mashable shared their tips on getting more likes on Facebook, take a look.

If you’re looking to get better engagement out of your Facebook posts, add more pictures and start speaking in the first person.

Social media data expert Dan Zarrella — who tracked and analyzed more than 1.3 million posts from the 10,000 most-Liked Facebook pages — has released details about which posts get the most likes, shares and comments on Facebook, from post type and length to the best time of day to add updates.

Photos bring in the highest number of engagement across the board, followed by text and video, according to Zarrella. News links bring in the least numbers of likes, shares and comments.

Meanwhile, posts with a high number of self-referential words such as “I” and “me” get more likes — a tactic that doesn’t work well on Twitter.

“Overall, the best strategy for Facebook, as well as all kinds of social media marketing, is to create a lot of interesting content and share it,” Zarrella told Mashable. “On Facebook, visual content does especially well. It’s also important to be passionate, not neutral.”

This means that both positive and negative posts tend to do well with engagement.

Timing is also key. Updates posted later in the day (Eastern Time) bring in more shares and Likes, but they tend to peak around 8 p.m. Shares trickle off around the end of the work day (6 p.m.).

“Publish when others aren’t, such as later in the day and on the weekends,” Zarrella advised.

For example, Facebook posts that go up on Saturdays and Sundays tend to get more Likes than those during the week. Similar to Twitter engagement, Facebook posts do better earlier in the week than later: Thursday is the least active day for Likes.

People also tend to be active throughout the week in the early hours of the day (5 a.m. ET) and during lunchtime (12 p.m. ET).

For a full look at which posts do best, check out the infographic below or sign up for Zarrella’s free marketing webinar.